My coteacher told me we had to start the supplementary book in class today, since all the exercises have to be finished by June.

She said she would do it. But my lesson plan for my open class was due that day, so she decided to edit it, instead of teach.

2nd period, she had a meeting. She gave me the supplemental book, and 4 pages to teach.

For 40 minutes.

It was a simple dialogue about greetings. Even the kids who can’t read can say “I’m fine, thank you, and you?”

How could i stretch this into 40 minutes?

I’ve always admired people who can bullshit for entire class periods. My coteacher. My afterschool teacher. During Winter Camp, the educational DVDs didn’t work, so my coteacher had to fill 40 minutes. And she did.

I could kill 5 minutes, if I needed to. Any more than that, and I’d have to resort to Hangman.

But today was different.

I was able to make 4 pages of short listening activities last the entire class.

We did Listen and Repeat, we practiced in Korean and English, they read the dialogue, I gave them time to study, and then we had a quiz. The quiz was hard, but hey, they tried.

Then they had 5 pages of homework, haha.

I had become a teacher. My coteacher had sprung an unfamiliar book on me at the last minute, and I had risen to the challenge. I taught all the classes by myself today, something I hadn’t counted on doing.

I felt like I’d finally arrived. It’d only taken a year and six months, but I could go into an unfamiliar situation and come out relatively unscathed.

Then came my failure.

I’d been working diligently since Friday on my Open Class materials. I’d come in early and stayed late every day.

Today, all I had to do was print the cards for our Go Fish Game and cut them out.

Except it wasn’t that easy.

I had to finish the cards, re-edit them when the printer messed them up, practice our Lesson Plan with my coteacher, and make the Dialogue Game cards look nicer.

I didn’t have time to print until it was time to leave.

Then, my coteacher said she wanted me to paste different color paper to the back of the cards, to make them thicker.

Which made the process of cutting out the cards take twice as long.

I only managed to finish 4 out of 10 before I had to leave. And that was at 6:20. I got out of work at 4:30. My coteacher is cutting out the other 10 cards, but I’ll have to help her because it’s my class, not hers.

So tonight, I’m sleeping in my clothes and going to work at 7 to make more copies and glue pieces of paper to the cards before cutting them out.

I’m seriously regretting selecting a “Go Fish” game for my Open Class. Then again, it’s my fault for deciding to make FIFTY TWO CARDS. What is wrong with me? I just wanted the game to last a long time!

But my students are going to play this game for 9 minutes. NINE MINUTES. AND IT TAKES THIS MUCH PREPARATION. WTFFFFF

All schools have Open Classes, but not all of them put such emphasis on them, as mine does.

I just have to make it to 12:10 tomorrow. Then on Friday, it’s Sports Day, and I have no classes.

Except for 7 on Monday, 4 of which need to be prepped.

My Open Class is in 8 days.

OMG I’M GOING TO DIE

…not really, because I had to stay late.

Anyways, I went downstairs to make a billion copies.

My coteacher came in to ask me something, then she left.

She came back in a moment later, followed by two 6th grade boys. One was clutching his finger, and it was covered in blood. Apparently he and his friend had been playing with a boxcutter. Korean students carry them in their pencil cases to sharpen their pencils. It scares the shit out of me. They’re allowed to carry knives in school!

The nurse wasn’t around, so my coteacher yells for some bandaids, but there aren’t any. So they find gauze, but it’s easily soaked.

My coteacher yells at another woman to call someone. Several other teachers show up to watch, stand around, and wonder what they should do.

She holds the boy’s finger in gauze. The wound is too deep for the small bandaid we managed to find.

The boy had been bleeding for a long time in the classroom before he came downstairs. He started feeling woozy, and he collapsed.

My coteacher roused him awake. He sat on the floor, took a look at the bloody gauze, and passed out again. His friend cradled his head in his arms.

Eventually, the nurse showed up, and my coteacher took him next door to her office. She came back and forth to the copy room to bring the boy several cups of water. Later, him mom came to pick him up. She walked down the hallway with him, holding his hand high above his head.

As if the day hadn’t been crazy enough already.

So today was like any Tuesday. My 6th graders were learning about “Don’t use bad words.” My coteacher asked them, “What else can’t you use?”

One student said, “Don’t use the fire.” Another said, “Don’t use the lighter.”

This turned out to be nearly prophetic, as today was a Fire Drill day.

I should have suspected something when my coteacher told me she had to go to the gym for a meeting.

She came back and wrote a note on the board while the students were reading.

“Let’s talk about open class at 4. I have to go gym. I am a patient for fire training.”

I’m not sure why, but this made sense at the time.I thought she’d pretend to be a victim or something, while the principal talked about what to do in a fire. I pictured her chilling in the gym. If it were me, I’d fall asleep on the gym floor.

So she leaves, I read with the kids, and around 3:30, I hear an announcement. They usually end after like 10 seconds, but this one kept going…and going… and going.

Then, one of my students runs to the window, and sees a fire truck. There’s a fire hose, spraying water at the building.

“Teacher, FIRE!” He shouts. All the kids are now at the window.

“It’s not a real fire, it’s just practice.” How can I explain to the kids not to panic? From our window, we can’t see what the fire truck is spraying. Why is there water involved? And where is the truck getting the water when there’s no hydrant in the yard?

My coteacher said fire “training.” She’d tell me if I had to evacuate the building, right?

“No, REAL FIRE!” The kids are now shoving their pencil cases into their bags and heading out the door.

Since they speak Korean, I’m assuming they could understand the announcement. So I start to panic. Their screams aren’t helping.

We head outside, and see the fire hose spraying class 1-3.

“Teacher, class 1-3 is ON FIRE!” one student screams.

As if on cue, class 1-3 stampedes past the fire hose, giggling. Several of them wave, and then run back into the supposedly “burning” school.

One guy has what looks like a propane tank that’s spraying fire in the middle of the yard. Behind him, 6th graders are playing soccer, unperturbed by the open flame. Then. one of the first grade teachers runs up to the flame and douses it with a fire extinguisher. The smoke resulting from the spray gets the kid’s attention.

I see teachers running out of the building, helping and carrying other teachers into the year. I see my coteacher being supported by two other teachers, who help her walk to safety. That must be what she meant by “patient.”

I think back to all the fire drills I’d been subjected to in my life. None of them were this interesting, this well planned or dramatic. I lived in a dormitory that had smoke sensitive alarms, which were placed right outside the bathrooms. Shower steam could, and often did, trigger the alarms. The other triggers were pot smoke and college students who couldn’t cook. Instead of replacing the alarms, my school instituted a $75 fine and a fire safety course if you set it off multiple times.

At this time, the students had figured out that it was, in fact, a drill. And now we were outside, with 5 minutes left in class, and kids were playing soccer.

Somehow, we all made it back to class. I worried my co-teacher had seen me out in the yard while she was being a “patient”, but there was an alarm going off, and the announcement made it impossible to teach.

After posting about this on Facebook, my friends asked me what was the point of it. What can you learn from teachers pretending to die, a fire truck randomly rinsing off parts of the building, and a fire extinguisher demonstration? I’m not sure. Don’t play with matches?

The only thing I’ve learned is that my apartment doesn’t have a fire alarm.

Awkward Conversations with my Coteacher, part V?

Note: Pororo is an animated penguin from a South Korean TV show, popular among children. When I say his name, I say “PO-ro-ro,” but I think Koreans say “po-RO-ro”. I also pronounce “Doraemon” strangely, and I can never remember the right way to say it.

There are a set of twins in the 6th grade. Fortunately for me, they’re in different classes, but they have extremely similar names. The first part of their name is the same, but the second parts are different enough. These kids don’t have a freckle out of place, I don’t know how their parents tell them apart.

Me: CO, who is older - you or your brother?

CO: My brother.

Me: How much older? One minute? Two minutes?

CO: Two minutes.

Me: Do people call you the wrong name - they call you CH instead of CO?

CO: Yes. I don’t like my brother.

Me: I call you the wrong name too.

Another student: He’s not CO, he’s CH!

Me: Don’t confuse me!

CO: CH is my girlfriend’s name.

Me: CH is your brother’s name, and your girlfriend’s name?

CO: Yes.

Me: Your brother is your girlfriend?

CO: Yes. I don’t like my girlfriend, either.

6th grade boys are so, so weird.

My 6th graders are learning about directions, and one of the vocab words is “between”. My co-teacher likes music, so I found a Sesame Street song, starring Wayne Brady and Elmo, about the word “between.” I love Sesame Street, it’s a great teaching tool, and I thought my students would love it too.

Their reaction?

They pointed to the screen and asked, “Obama?”

Uhhhh… No. Just… no.

My co-teacher laughed it off, saying that my students also think all white people look like me. Which would explain why they call me Lizzy, who was their teacher last year.

“The students need to see different faces,” she explained.

Their text books try to rectify this - the national textbook has a character named Peter, who is black.

They’ll probably think he’s Obama’s son or something.

The law of being sick: If you are sick, you automatically forget what it feels like to be healthy. All you can think of are previous times you were sick, and how this is worse/better.

It also sucks to be away from home when you don’t feel well. No one brings you soup, you have to make it yourself.

Also, it kind of annihilates your weekend.

She saw a picture of Angelina and Brad, and she said she didn’t like them as couple. 

“She stole Brad,” my coteacher explained.

I was just like, “That was so long ago! You’re still mad about that?”

She shrugged. “It’s because I really loved Friends.”

Jennifer Aniston, if you’re reading this, you have supporters in South Korea. And your Friends days will never die. Am I the only person who didn’t watch that show?